Distributed job processing performed using plural servers aims at processing load distribution and processing efficiency improvement. JP-A No. 2001-160038, for example, discloses a load distributed information processing system. In the system: a job request received from a client computer is temporarily stored in a job storage device; a job arrival notice is sent to plural server computers simultaneously; when the job arrival notice is received, each of the plural server computers calculates a waiting time corresponding to the magnitude of the current load on the server computer and accesses, after staying in a waiting state for the calculated waiting time, the storage device; and the first server computer to access the job storage device acquires and processes the job. In this way, the load of information processing can be evenly distributed among the plural computers.
JP-A No. 2000-242614 discloses a distributed processing system. In the distributed processing system, a large-scale job is divided into plural small jobs and, of the plural small jobs, those yet to be processed are distributed to terminals from which job acquisition requests have been received for distributed processing among such terminals. This allows the computation load for executing a large-scale job to be divided among plural terminals.
The technique proposed in JP-A No. 2001-160038 allows the load for executing a large-scale job to be divided among plural computers, but the job storage device is required to manage all server computers to which a job arrival notice is to be sent. Also, each of the server computers is required to calculate a waiting time corresponding to the current load on it and stay waiting for the calculated waiting time.
According to the technique proposed in JP-A No. 2000-242614, divided jobs are distributed only when requested from plural terminals, so that jobs are processed under the initiative of terminals. In JP-A No. 2000-242614, however, no proposal is made as to how to manage job processing performed at plural terminals or how to realize job distribution taking job attributes into consideration.
Both JP-A No. 2001-160038 and JP-A No. 2000-242614 appear to assume that the plural computers or terminals to process jobs have uniform processing capacity, and how to manage, when jobs are unevenly distributed among plural computers or terminals, the jobs is not described in either of JP-A No. 2001-160038 and JP-A No. 2000-242614.